Old Cornwall remains:

Had to post this...photo by my talented bro Justin The Frame. We were out bimbling on the moors the other weekend on Kilmar Tor near North Hill and were delighted to discover the remains of these recent roundhouses on an original archaeological site at the foot of the tor. Magical moment!!
CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW.

Farouk Ibn-Ignelh: Occult Angler of Old Cthornwall

Apothecary and purveyor of occult fishing equipment to the alchymists, trawlerman and big-game anglers of Mevagissey, Farouk Ibn-Ignelh was a notorious seafront character of old Cthornwall in the first quarter of the 1900’s. Farouk’s ancestry in the county could be traced right back to the 1st century AD, when his illustrious forebear first landed on these shores as helmsman to Aramis of Josephathea, the noted Syrian perfumier and spice trader.

Originally apprenticed as a stockman and squid wrangler to Lord St Leviathan’s oceanic farm in Mound’s Bay, Farouk acquired much preternatural piscine learning and arcane mollusc law. Expert in the art of eldritch angling and sea husbandry at an early age, Farouk’s keen nose for business soon had him trading his skills independently to fishing communities the length and breadth of the Cthornish coast, eventually setting up his famed emporium in Mevagissey in 1924.

As well as selling equipment for the capture and netting of the vast range of monstrous and other-dimensional aquatic life in the county’s waters, he also became a noted specialist in the breeding of such creatures for alchymical rites and processes, as well as their preparation for medicinal and recreational purposes.

A seasoned and proficient angler in his own right he was often to be seen skilfully casting rod and line at the farthest reach of the Mevagissey harbour wall where, as an equally noted raconteur, he happily told strange and hair shrivelling tales of the deep to the village youngsters. It is believed that it was in this capacity that he was ‘rediscovered’ by the unsettling Dr Fostux, who it is likely he first encountered during their shared youthful employ in the service to Lord St Leviathan on St Michael’s Mound in the period 1907-13.

As a small historical footnote it was Farouk Ibn-Ignelh, through selective genetic crossbreeding, who first developed the notorious mind warming sea-tobacco which local fisherman came to refer to as ‘the Meva ciggy’.

Dr Fostux

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Mad scientist and organ recitalist extraordinaire, Dr Fostux was a figure of some intrigue, scandal and notoriety in early 1900’s Cthornwall. He was rumoured by some to be the secret lovechild of Lord St Leviathan and an unnamed other. Raised by the family of one of the Lord’s boatmen, his stepfather was a keeper of the giant squid pool at St Michael’s Mound. It was here the young Fostux developed an early fascination and aptitude for all things monstrous and scientific, working as night-porter, and then later apprentice, in Lord St Leviathan’s oceanic genetic breeding programme.

However, following an unspecified splicing disaster involving a young child from the local foundling hospital in Penzance, and a rare strain of lobster discovered in a flooded pitchblende mine, Fostux was banished from his home in extremus opprobrium , and was not heard from again for some time.

It was not until 10 years later, in 1923, that vague stories began to circulate about late night deliveries and unsettling lights observed at an old lighthouse in Restormel Bay. Along with advertisements in the St Austell Gazette of that year, requesting “reminiscence, relics and old toenail clippings (cash price paid in genuine coinage on receipt)” it became evident that Dr Fostux had returned to the county and was embarked upon a new vein of scientific enquiry.

Within months the fashion for highly addictive distilled and bottled ‘narrative essences’ began to sweep the county, causing much social malaise and domestic strife among the general population. With much of the local workforce swiftly addicted to such “chymical experience and virtual living” the Stannary Parliament of the time demanded the source of the outbreak be quickly found and cauterised. Much suspicion automatically focused upon the activities of the newly returned Dr Fostux, but only circumstantial evidence was ever uncovered, and that in the form of a discarded packing case for Bunsen burners and a sea stained receipt from the Vatican, for the purchase of fifteen shin bones of St George and a pornographic snuff box once belonging to Pope Pious IX.

The Travels of Axel Pendogget, Science Ranger

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Cornwall is a land of mystery and intrigue, big cats, sea beasties, weresheep, pasty spiders and giants…and cow eggs, those strange round black objects that appear mysteriously around the countryside at the end of the summer.

The Science Rangers are a select band of highly trained Fortean reasearchers and crypto-zoologists who brave the wilds of the Cornish moors and beaches, documenting these bizarre and often dangerous phenomena, keeping the countryside safe and quiet for the likes of you and I…

This image, as well as featuring Axel Pendogget, a true modern pioneer of the work of the rangers, also shows various aspects of Cornish fauna, including the pasty spider, described in the following extract.

Few reliable accounts of Cornish cryptozoology exist, but one of the less apocryphal is:
The Countrymans Guide to Moorland Fauna by Caractacus Shroom (1922 Blood Tor Press, Penzance).
"Pasty spiders:
These buggers are big. Rare but big. We’re talking boulder-sized big. Which is not an unfair analogy when one stops to consider that it is under boulders and rocks (big ones mind) that the pasty spider is want to lurk.
Named originally for their choice of diet, the pasty spider occupies a unique position in the Cornish food chain. The first reported encounters were in the deep shafts and addits of the county’s tin mines during the very early days of the Cornish tin trade. They could scuttle from dark side tunnels with enough speed and mass to bear a fully grown mature miner to the ground and make off with his crib-box. Many an unsuspecting worker at the tin-face lost his lunch, as well as the occassional eyeball and pit pony, to the pastix arachniae subterraneum.

With the decline of the tin industry over the 19th and 20th Centuries, the pasty spider is now increasingly rare. The few breeding pairs that are known to still exist now prey fairly exclusively upon lost ramblers, sheep and the occassional small dog.
The disused and largely unmapped shafts and addits of the county’s mining industry still provide its main abode and means of travel beneath the countryside, giving it access to the surface world and food sources in the remote moorland regions."

Poster & prints available over on Red Bubble.

The Call of Cthornwall

"Lady Elizabeth Eldritch, displaying one of her discoveries on Bodmin Moor during her 1885 parabiology field trip. This little critter was harvested from an albumen sack found dangling from roof beams in the old pitchblende mine by Brimstone Tor..."

Been having fun with my latest steampunked views of Westcountry life under the growing umbrella notion of the Call of Cthornwall, where I can give free range to the pasty spiders and grockle mites of the county, with the safety of history between me and them! Publishing as posters, prints and cards over on Red Bubble, there may well be airships, test tubes and frock coats aplenty in the coming months...

Albert Cropper: Monster Stopper!

During the late1800’s in Cthornwall, the ‘bug’ hunter Albert Cropper was a familiar figure tramping the byways and cliff paths of the county, peddling his services in much the same way as itinerant knife grinders or mole catchers of the time.

His father operated a night soil collection business in Redruth . As an offshoot to this already dangerous work, Albert became the family firm’s parabiologist, specialising after a couple of grim encounters on the early morning collection round involving a Devonian tape lizard and a couple of giant stool grubs.

Seeing the potential for travel and the occasional balloon ride out to the Scilly Isles, Albert went freelance in 1879 with the aid of a sponsorship deal from Sir Richard Trevithick , the famed Cthornish inventor, mining engineer and monster trap designer.

This particular image was made as part of the 1885 Eldritch Expedition to Bodmin Moor and its interior, to which Albert was co-opted by local magistrates as Lady Elizabeth’s native tracker. It shows Albert presenting a captive grockle mite after an emergency roadside extraction from a Belgian tourist who had visited the shire without first taking the right inoculations.

Poster and print available at Red Bubble.